Walt Whitman

1. Walt Whitman “America’s Poet”

2. Birth and Early Career • Born 31 May 1819 near Huntington, Long Island, New York • Second child (of 8) born to Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. • Works as printer’s apprentice (to 1835) and as a schoolteacher. (the family home)

3. The Journalist, 1844 • Worked for several different newspapers and became editor of The Brooklyn Eagle • Wrote short fiction from 1841-1848 • Many fiction themes and techniques borrowed from Poe and Hawthorne

4. New Orleans • Lives in New Orleans for 4 months as editor of the Daily Crescent. • Sees slavery and slave-markets at first hand- s huge impact on his perspective • Experiences with nature (“live oaks, with moss”) and with French language later appear frequently in his poetry.

5. Influences: Literature and Music • Italian opera: “Were it not for the opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass.” • Shakespeare, especially Richard III. • The Bible • The Transcendentalists!! (There are clear influences from Bryant, Emerson, and Thoreau).

6. Emerson • Emerson helped Whitman to “find himself, and his voice as a poet. • “I was simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.” (yikes!)

7. Literary Acquaintances • Edgar Allan Poe • William Cullen Bryant • Amos Bronson Alcott • Henry David Thoreau • Ralph Waldo Emerson

8. Whitman and Phrenology • 1849: A phrenological examination confirms Whitman’s sense of his own character: • Whitman’s analysis pleased him so much that he reprinted parts of it in several editions of Leaves of Grass: • “This man has a grand physical construction, and power to live to a good old age. He is undoubtedly descended from the soundest and hardiest stock. Size of head large. Leading traits of character appear to be Friendship, Sympathy, Sublimity and Self-Esteem, and markedly among his combinations the dangerous faults of Indolence, a tendency to the pleasure of Voluptuousness…and a certain reckless swing of animal will…”

9. Leaves of Grass, 1855 Twelve poems, including • “Song of Myself” • “I Sing the Body Electric” • “The Sleepers” Only 795 copies printed Family tradition says that Whitman set some of the type for this edition.

10. Leaves of Grass, 1855 (an excerpt) Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no more modest than immodest. Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, And whatever I do or say I also return.

11. Whitman’s Themes • Transcendent power of love, brotherhood, and comradeship • Imaginative projection into others’ lives • Optimistic faith in democracy and equality • Belief in regenerative and illustrative powers of nature and its value as a teacher • Equivalence of body and soul and the unabashed exaltation of the body and sexuality

12. Whitman’s Poetic Techniques • Free verse: lack of metrical regularity and conventional rhyme • Use of repeated images, symbols, phrases, and grammatical units • Use of lists and catalogs • The Whitman “envelope” • Contrast and parallelism in paired lines

13. example from “Song of Myself” • Where the heifers browse, and the geese nip their food with short jerks; • Where the sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie, • Where the herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near; • Where the hummingbird shimmers . . . . where the neck of the longlived swan is curving and winding • Where the laughing-gull scoots by the slappy shore and laughs her near-human laugh . . .

14. Whitman’s Use of Language • Idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation. • Words used for their sounds as much as their sense; foreign languages • Use of language from several disciplines: The sciences: anatomy, astronomy, botany (especially the flora and fauna of America); businesses and professions, such as carpentry; military and war terms

15. Reviews: Praise • Ralph Waldo Emerson, letter to Whitman, 21 July 1855: • “I find [Leaves of Grass] the most extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed. . . . I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start.”

16. Reviews and Protests • “Foul work" filled with "libidinousness" (The Christian Examiner) • There are too many persons, who imagine they demonstrate their superiority to their fellows, by disregarding all the politenesses and decencies of life, and, therefore, justify themselves in indulging the vilest imaginings and shamefullest license. (Rufus Griswold, The Criterion)

17. Leaves of Grass, 1856 • Whitman has Emerson’s praise printed on the spine in gold letters: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” • “I do not believe that all the sermons, so-called, that have been preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching." Henry David Thoreau

18. The Good Gray Poet • May 1865. Whitman’s friend William Douglas O’Connor secures him a job at the Attorney General’s office, a post he holds until he leaves after he suffers a stroke in 1873. • O’Connor publishes The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication (1866), the beginning of a shift in Whitman’s public persona and popularity.

19. The (messy) Poet at Home • Whitman would allow no one to pick up his papers, saying that whatever he wanted surfaced sooner or later. • Whitman died on 26 March 1892 and is buried in the tomb that he had designed.

20. Credits • Sources are given in the notes section of the slides except as noted in the notes below. • Pictures are courtesy of the Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive at the University of Virginia: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/whitman/